The use of wireless communications systems is well known for transmitting information between fixed stations and one or more geographically dispersed mobile receivers. For example, satellite communications systems have been used in the trucking industry for years to provide messaging and location information between fleet owned dispatch centers and their respective tractor-trailer vehicles. Systems exist were a company, hereinafter referred to as a contractee, provides equipment and services which incorporate wireless telephone services. The contractee can bundle equipment and services, including value added applications and/or products and provide, resell, lease or rent them to employees, customers, contractors, etc.
The contractee may wish to limit the availability of certain ones of the bundled services. Until now, no system or method allowed contractee control of access to bundled services. Up till now, this control was always held by the telecommunications service provider.
Phone service providers generate much income through providing services to user mobile stations (MS) which route traffic through a mobile switching center (MSC). The MSC provides services and coordination between mobile users and external communications networks. This backbone switch is also a primary billing vehicle of a telecommunications service provider allowing a range of billing schemes based on time of day, demand, volume of data, etc. A need exists to allow mobile communications users, particularly those associated with fleet communications, to control costs and access to certain systems such as ring back tones, three-way calling, call waiting, voice mail, etc. while avoiding the costly billing of the phone company's MSC.
There has been a long-standing trend toward distributed processing. For instance, attempts are underway to avoid the MSC—the central telco switch. The MSC is problematic for many reasons. For instance, it typically takes up space on many floors; it has to be cooled, etc. Attempts have been underway to make a packet switch with distributed processing. In this manner, attempts have been made to reduce the footprint (e.g., power consumption, size, computing requirements) while trying to increase processing capacity. Reducing the footprint currently is addressed by spreading functionality over several switches. For instance, it is now common to use what are referred to as intelligent peripherals. As an example, some telecommunications companies handle call traffic by routing calls to one city several hundred miles from base stations connected by fiber optics in another city through a central station. As the trend toward distributed switches and switching continues even functions such as the Home Location Register (HLR) and Visiting Location Register (VLR) that used to be a part of the MSC are now located separate from the MSC.
A need exists to allow business owners, equipment rentals, etc. to control of access to features by mobile communications equipment such as mobile phones, etc. A need also exists to control of access to features to mobile equipment in an environment with a reduced footprint.
Applicable reference numerals have been carried forward.